1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print control apparatus and a print control method for controlling printing apparatuses in a printing system including a plurality of printing apparatuses, a storage medium for storing a program, and a printing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a tandem printing system is known as a system in which a plurality of printing apparatuses are connected in series, and the same printing material, e.g., a continuous sheet or the like is sequentially printed by the printing apparatuses. In regard to a system in which two printing apparatuses are connected in series, for example, in the case of two-sided printing, a method is known by which a first face (front face) of a continuous sheet is printed by a first printing apparatus, the continuous sheet is inverted (reversed) by an reverse apparatus, and thereafter a second face (back face) of the same continuous sheet is printed by a second printing apparatus. In the case of one-sided printing, a method is known by which the first face or the second face of the continuous sheet is printed by the first printing apparatus or the second printing apparatus.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2009-78409 describes a system in which, when the degrees of consumption of the same type of consumable items or the degrees of accumulation of wastes in the first printing apparatus and the second printing apparatus are compared and the result of this comparison is that a predetermined difference has occurred, tasks allotted to the first printing apparatus and the second printing apparatus are interchanged until this difference is resolved. In this system, if the predetermined difference has occurred in the degrees of consumption of a plurality of consumable items, it is determined whether to interchange printing tasks, based on the consumable item whose degree of consumption is largest, or the waste whose degree of accumulation is largest.
However, it is not considered in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2009-78409 that the work time taken for replacing, disposing of, or cleaning a component (hereinafter referred to as maintenance) differs depending on the type of the consumable item or the waste (hereinafter referred to as a component). Accordingly, if the timings of the maintenance of components for which a maintenance work time is long are different, the operations cannot be performed in parallel, and the maintenance work time for the two apparatuses is taken, resulting in a long stop time of the printing system.